Articles in Category: October

iAnimate instructor and former DreamWorks animator, Ken Fountain, is launching a project that we thought all of you independently-minded artists might find interesting to hear about. It’s called Crackerbox Studio, and it’s launching a Kickstarter campaign for its first title, “Geo-Me!”.

If you could ask the artists about their techniques, experience, what they feels is the next step in the film or game industry, or anything at all, what would it be? Share your questions and comments via Facebook, Twitter or email us. We have an awesome panel and we want you to participate and be part of it.

There's a lot to talk about and we will do our best to answer and cover the topics you want to hear.

Here's a fun article on Method Studios and those "Hip" dancing hamsters.

One of the most popular commercials from 2011 was the Kia spot ‘Soul’ from agency David & Goliath, in which dancing hamsters took on a legion of dancing robots. We covered the spot here. Now, the hamsters are back in a disco-infused period piece, with even more impressive work by Method Studios. We talk to visual effects supervisor Andy Boyd about ‘Bringing Down the House’, from production company MJZ and director Carl Rinsch. The commercial was filmed by DOP John Matheison (Gladiator) at a theater in Prague, with real dancers wearing oversized clothing and a tracking rig, which was used to replace their heads with CG hamster versions. “They had a head piece they would wear that had tracking markers that we had spec’d out and measured, working in collaboration with Legacy Effects,” explains Boyd. “We actually tracked the whole body because we replaced the hands in most shots, and we were also tracking the body for interactive lighting – when the arm casts a shadow or moves in front of the head.”

Since we have such a fantastic animation community and because we want a better way to connect with animation enthusiasts we are opening our blog up to anyone who’s interested in animation. The idea behind this is to offer a venue where you can share your thoughts and help us bring up important subjects you would like to read, write or talk about. That’s right, we want to give you the chance to express your thoughts too!